Dead Soon After.
The cops said a skull fracture killed him. They had no suspects.
But I did.
Brian suddenly jumped from minor irritation to legit problem. I didn't know who he did the books for, but I could only assume he was doing a bang-up job if they were willing to throw a hit his way. Hits aren't cheap, or given casually.
If it was a hit, it was the most trivial thing that I'd ever heard a hit put out for, and believe you me, I've seen a lot of people die over trivia.
Like I said-if.
I couldn't imagine Brian getting his own hands dirty, though. He was too fond of talking big and making threats. No real violence had happened around him.
Yet.
I hauled over to Lady Luck to see if Andy had anything. Like me, Andy was a creature of habit. He'd be there before opening, drinking espresso and reading the paper with his daily bran muffin. He hated the muffins, but at his age, he considered them half-breakfast, half-medicinal.
I needed some hair of the dog. Shit, I needed the whole Westminster Dog Show the way I felt.
I knocked on the door. Andy unlocked the bolt then sat back down at the bar where the crossword and his accursed bran muffin waited.
I locked the door behind me. The weight of the room hit me like an open-handed slap as I entered.
I smelled menthol cigarettes. Andy doesn't smoke anymore, much less menthols. He glanced at me and then towards the back. Vic sat alone in a booth.
"Been waiting for you," Andy said. "You know where the Makers is."
I helped myself to a couple of fingers, belted it and refilled before I went over to Vic. I slid into the opposite bench, smelling days worth of scotch seeping off of him. Vic looked tired, his clothes wrinkled and dirty. His fingers trembled on the cigarette, ash spattered the table. I didn't say a word. He was the one who needed to talk, came looking for me.
We drank in funereal silence. Every time Vic tried to talk or even look at me, tears would well and the silence would stand. I didn't feel it was my place to ask the questions.
Instead, we just sat and quietly drank the city away. An hour passed. Vic had four more drinks, slipping deeper into himself with each sip.
Then on unsteady legs, Vic stood up and leaned into my ear. He whispered, "I didn't mean it."
Without looking up, I heard him stumbling out the door.
The room remained quiet for a few seconds after he left.
"They're using again," Andy said into the newspaper.
"How do you know?" It was a stupid question. Andy would know. I knew. I just wanted to ask, to carve the slightest sliver of doubt off of the truths that I was ignoring.
"Vic shook my hand. Saw tracks on his wrist. If he's that far down…" He knew that I could finish the sentence without him having to. "She was here earlier. Kept scratching her forearms. Long sleeve shirt seem right to you on a day like today?" The newspaper rustled.
I swallowed my anger. "The accountant?" The words were acid in my mouth.
"Him?" Andy licked his finger, turned the page of his Post. "Used to work for the Dohnaghy's up in Yonkers." Andy lingered over "used to". "Full name's Brian King. Mickey Dohnaghy seems to think the kid's a prick."
That was all I needed to hear.
They buried Mookie. Brian disappeared. I didn't waste my energy looking for him. I figured he would rear his head eventually. At which time, I would eagerly express my disapproval.
Only all hell broke loose first.
When I showed up at Dino's yesterday, the joint looked like Detroit after the riots. Angie, the owner, stood behind the bar with a stunned expression, looking over the wreckage of her bar. The air was tangy from the bleach that the Mexican kids were slathering over the floor. Even under the bleach, I thought I could still smell…
…blood?
"What the hell happened here?" I said. "Where's my stool?"
"Vic and Bertie…" She opened her mouth twice to continue, then completely lost her shit, collapsing into sobs. It took a lot of comforting and even more tequila to stifle her tears and get to the goddamn story.
Vic and Bertie were at Dino's the night before. Somebody walked in and blasted Vic with a shotgun.
Just like that.
He was probably dead before he hit the ground. I hope he was.
Two pieces of buckshot caught Bertie in the throat. She took a while. Bertie lay on the bar floor, bleeding out while the ambulance took its time.
You know that a pizza will get to you faster in Manhattan than an ambulance? Been proven. Look it up.
By the time paramedics arrived, the only person alive in the bar was Josh, who'd caught some glass in his face. He tried to stop Bertie's bleeding using his shirt without strangling her. It didn't matter. He'd have been better off ordering a fucking pepperoni pie and hoping the delivery kid had CPR training.
Vic was in my barstool when the shotgun vaporized his chest, taking my stool with him.
Josh only caught a glimpse of the shooters. They were in ski masks.
The tally: Three people and the barstool that I'd spent years molding to my ass were dead. All tracing back to Brian, a big mouth who backed it up with a little knife.
He wasn't hard to track. His mouth cut a path like the runway lights at LaGuardia. Even in bars where his name wasn't known, his behavior was. He'd been kicked out of a few places and pulled his knife at one. The path led uptown. I followed.
As I moved north, I'd catch news reports. Even in a city as violent as New York, the Dino's Massacre (as it was called) was a sensational story. The media ate it up. The cops moved fast. Within hours, a shotgun was found in the trunk of a Chevy, the same Chevy witnesses saw burning tracks away from Dino's. By nightfall, the cops had Mookie's brothers in custody.
Somewhere in my shallowest sense of self, I felt sorry for them. Amateurs.
So I wait. He gave me a look when I walked in, but without recognition. I bought him a round and fed him my shots. He almost got into a fight with a kid at the pool table. He reached into his pocket and I reached into mine. His knife didn't come out, so neither did my.45. That's okay. He'll pull it eventually. He always does. Everyone will see who pulled first.
I'll wait.
And all I'll leave behind is the memory of an ugly shirt.
Hot Enough For Ya?
Jimmy Romance felt the blood drain from his face like somebody pulled out the stop plug in his neck.
"So joo had no idea that she was his daughter?" asked Ricardo with a smile as he leaned on the countertop of Jimmy's Tan-O-Rama. He asked the question slowly, savoring the words like a fine wine.
Jimmy couldn't answer the obvious question since his mind was still spinning with the new information.
The girl with whom he'd recently broken several laws of New York State, physics, and nature with, was the one and only daughter of the one and only Jonathan Bass.
Or, depending on who you asked, "Butcher" Bass.
And asked quietly.
Jimmy thought he might vomit right into his brand new tanning bed.
Ricardo clicked his tongue. "Of course joo didn't know. Because…"
Jimmy didn't need Ricardo to finish. The rest of the sentence would have been something about sado-masochism, death wishes, or both. "Does he know yet?" Jimmy hated the tremble he heard in his voice.
"Oh, he knows," Ricardo said, grinning, his gold incisor winking at Jimmy. Ricardo was the type of guy who liked to bring sour grapes to the dinner table. The kind of guy who only talked about the movies he didn't like. The restaurants with sucky food. The bad luck around the neighborhood. And he did it with glee. Ricardo was a ghoul for the jinxed residents of the West Village. "She come home last night wearing somebody's old bowling shirt. The one with Jimmy R. embroidered over the pocket?" Ricardo traced a finger over his heart.